Along with advances in computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), the manufacturing industry has developed the three-dimensional (3D) printing technology, which is capable of rapidly fabricating products from an original design concept.
In fact, the 3D printing (i.e., the three-dimensional printing) technology is a collective term referring to a series of rapid prototyping (RP) techniques, and the basic principle is laminate manufacture, wherein a rapid prototyping machine is used to form cross-sectional shapes of a workpiece in the X-Y plane through scanning, shift intermittently at a layer thickness in the Z coordinates, and ultimately form 3D objects. The 3D printing technology is applicable regardless of the geometric shapes and the RP technology produces excellent outputs in particular for complex parts, which saves efforts and processing time significantly. The 3D printing technology is capable of presenting an object of a digital 3D model designed by means of computer-aided design (CAD) software in the least time for the user to touch and actually feel the geometry of the model, or even to test the assemblability of the parts and possible functions.
The 3D printing technology includes various types. The Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) method is one type of the 3D printing technology, and the FDM method is widely adopted for its cheap fabrication cost and simple device structure. Main parameters related to a 3D printer in the printing technology using the 3D FDM method may include: a printing layer depth, a printing speed and a printing temperature, which are the three major factors for influencing overall printing quality. The printing layer depth directly influences a discharge speed (e.g., the discharge speed is faster if the layer depth is thicker, and thus a printing result thereof has lower definition). The printing speed influences a stability for the discharge nozzle to discharge material (e.g., when the printing speed is faster, the discharge nozzle is required to discharge material more stably). The printing temperature is a very important factor that influences the printing quality, and the printing temperature varies based on characteristics of coil materials. When a proper printing temperature is used, the discharge nozzle may stably discharge material while providing a smooth surface quality.
In general, the simplest method to achieve the preferable printing quality is to continuously maintain the coil material at a constant temperature. However, because a discharge nozzle design, a material characteristic, a discharge speed and a printing speed are correlated to one another, the printing quality of the 3D printer cannot be further improved simply by printing in constant temperature. Accordingly, it is a difficult problem for the manufacturers as how to dynamically adjust the temperature of the discharge nozzle so that the printing result may be fabricated in higher definition and more quickly.